Field of Invention
Various embodiments of the present disclosure relate to a proxy tunnel end point apparatus, a communication system and method for scalable network virtualization having the same, and more particularly, to a proxy tunnel end point apparatus with reduced configuration complexity, a communication system and method for scalable network virtualization having the same.
Description of Related Art
An overlay network virtualization method wherein a virtual network is configured with a virtual machine without being affected by the configuration of an underlay network in an IDC (Internet Data Center)-based cloud environment is entering into general use. Representative examples of this technology include VXLAN (virtual extensible local area network) and NVGRE (network virtualization using generic routing encapsulation). According to this technology, in order to configure a layer 2 virtual network, a tunnel is set between virtual machines existing in different servers so that traffic may be exchanged therebetween. Herein, in order to process multicast traffic such as flooding etc., if an underlay IP network supports multicast, it is better to use a multicast tunnel, but since most of today's IP networks do not support multicast, VXLAN or NVGRE solutions use full-mesh unicast tunnel methods instead of multicast tunnel methods. Furthermore, even when a multicast tunnel is being used for a non-unicast packet, for a unicast packet, a full-mesh unicast tunnel must be set between nodes belonging to a virtual network.
FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional communication system for network virtualization. In each of a plurality of node units 11, 12, 13, 14, each of a first to Nth tunnel end point units 21, 22, 23, 24 is included, respectively. Furthermore, to each of the first to Nth tunnel end point units 21, 22, 23, 24, each of a plurality of VMs (Virtual Machines) 31, 32, 33, 34 is connected, respectively. Herein, in a network having N node units, up to N*(N−1) unicast tunnels 40 must be set for one virtual network, and thus the complexity of setting/managing the network significantly increases to as much as O(N^2). Therefore, depending on limitations to the number of tunnels that may be made in one node unit, the size of an overlay type network virtualization domain is limited.